Ask a Mexican!

Dear Readers: The Mexican just got married to a chica caliente, so he's taken her on a honeymoon to the motherland so she can learn the proper art of tortilla-making. In the meanwhile, I offer this Best Of edition, because I plan to do all of my work this week en la cama—ZING!

Dear Mexican: The last two movies I attended were rated R. Sitting around me were Mexican families with very young children. Why do Mexicans bring their 8-year-old kids to see a movie like "Hostel"? Do Mexican parents just not give a shit or can they not afford a baby sitter? Plus, the Mexicans let their kids kick my seat.

Confused Moviegoer

Dear Gabacho: The only sin I see here is anyone forking over cash to watch "Hostel," the 2005 horror turkey whose main claim to fame was casting handsome wab Jay Hernandez as a character with the retre-gabacho name Paxton. As for your question, the Mexican refers you to the late New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, who famously quipped, "The words 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies." Nowhere is that nugget more applicable than with Mexicans. Mix gore, boobs, popcorn and the occasional midget or gay guy, and you can occupy a Mexican for two hours. See, violence and Mexican cinema go together like refried and beans—it's been one prolonged shootout that started with the 1919 silent classic "El Automovil Gris (The Grey Automobile)," which dramatized the real-life exploits of Mexico City's murderous Grey Automobile Gang and included actual footage of their execution, continued through the urban dramas of the 1950s and various 1960s sci-fi/Aztec mummy/lucha libre superhero follies, and reached its zenith with narcopelículas (drug dramas) that Spanish-language television channels have broadcast without pause for the past three decades.

The Mexican love for filmic blood isn't a pathological cultural trait, though: As any Hollywood executive will tell you, violence is a universal tongue that needs no subtitles. That's why Mexican parents take their kiddies to see such films—as the children become Americans and the parents remain stuck in remedial English classes, sometimes the only way to communicate is to speak the language of Charles Bronson. And the kid behind you? Just practicing his "Death Wish" moves so he can kick your ass.

Why do you people stink?

Zestfully White

Dear Gabacho: Same reason you don't: hard work.

What's up with all the elaborate wrought-iron fences in the Mexican parts of town? It almost seems like everyone is trying to outdo each other with these amazing displays of metallurgy. Is it just another way to try to protect the cars parked on the lawn and keep the livestock from wandering off, or is it a pathway to instant respect and envy among the neighbors?

WHrought Iron To Envy (WHITE) Guy

Dear Gabacho, This is a question that fascinates even sociologists. At "The Latinization of American Culture," a weeklong seminar held in 2005 by the USC Annenberg School for Communication, UCLA professor David Hayes-Bautista showed pictures of wrought-iron fences to describe what gabachos can expect when Mexicans move into their neighborhoods. But you can find the answer on the United States-Mexico border, WHITE: fences. Miles and miles of American-made fences. Triple-layered. Jagged. Deadly. That's our introduction to American society when we enter los Estados Unidos. All Mexicans want to assimilate, so fences are usually the first thing we erect once we buy a casa: pointy, menacing bars wrapped with organic barbed wire like bougainvilleas or roses to keep the damn Mexicans at bay. And still—as evidenced by the lemons stolen from my front lawn every night—Mexicans jump them.

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano or follow him on Instagram @gustavo_arellano!